Built like a Mercedes (?)

Guenter Scholz wrote:

You still don't get it. How long does it take to reach a town 120 miles
away at 60 mph?

2 hours!

How long does it take to reach a town 120 kilometers away at 60 kph?

2 hours!

DUH!

Unless you happen to be going to a town exactly a multiple of 10
kilometers away, your "advantage" is not an advantage at all. It might
be a slightly bigger advantage if there were 100 seconds in a minute,
100 minutes in an hour and 10 hours in a day, but there aren't. So it isn't.

And miles-per-hour has another advantage. 60 mph is 1 mile/minute, and
also happens to be a good rule-of-thumb average speed for a
cross-country trip. So the number of miles you're going is (to a first
order approximation) how many minutes it'll take. OTOH, 60 kph (1
km/minute) is far to slow to use as a rule of thumb, and 120 kph (2
km/minute) is far too fast.

 

Guenter Scholz wrote:

Of course freezing water as a reference point is NOT folklore!!! Its
one of the most accurately reproducible physical constants that can be
created any time any where that a supply of ice is available. Boiling
water is less accurate since atmospheric pressure skews it significantly
more than the freezing point. That's grade-school science stuff, no
great mystery.

 

I think he was poking fun at the fact that a "2x4" has not been 2-inches
by 4-inches since before WWII.

Plywood numbers (thicknesses in particlar) ARE reasonably accurate. But
go measure a "2x4" and tell me what you find...

 

Guess you must have dropped out after grade school. Freezing point is
also variable depending on colligative properties and impurities in
water.

 

True, but for concentrations that pull the freezing point significantly
far away from the freezing point of pure water, you can TASTE the
difference. And distilled water or rainwater is plenty good. Tap water
in many areas is good enough to get you very close.

You can nit-pick and be a know-it-all all you want, but its still one of
the easiest-to-reproduce physical constants that exists.

 

Hell, if you're going to be precise in baking, you'd better measure your
flour by weight and not volume. Of cource the vagarities in heat and
humidity of the weather also wreak haovic to the precise baker.

The complaint about the two bu fours belies a lack of carpentry
experience. Hell, just get it framed, the sheet rock and mud will cover
it anyway. And if you're making furniture, you wouldn't trust someone
else to do your measuring for you.

By show of hands, how many take a tape with you to Lowes/Home Depot?

How many get their lumber for furniture projects from lowes/Home Depot/
(insert whatever big box home improvement store here).

Doug

 

-snip- irrelevant stuff

I can just see it, imagine the supervisor and student exchange:

supervisor: did you check the purity of the water in the flask beside the
beaker of HCl
student: crap, I thought the water was in the beaker

cheers


ps, little excercise for Steve: town is 590 miles away with a speed limit
of 75 mph ..... how long does it take? well, 590/75 hr ... probably a
instant answer is not forthcoming.
Now imagine same town is quoted as 945 km away with a speed limit of
100 kph ..... how long does it take? well, 945/100 ... instant answer
of 9,45 hr. n'est ce pas? ... re duhh: pot, kettle black

Lesson learned? there you go!

 

I always have a tape measure in my pocket. I find it pretty amusing
how many people look at me like I've got two heads for carrying it,
but the way they find out is they need to measure a table or something
and are looking blankly at it trying to figure out what to do....

 

If it were the 100 kph road, it's probably be 60 MPH, not 75. 600
minutes, 10 hours.

OTOH, if it were the 75 mph road, it would probably be 120 kph, not
100. 945/120... probably not so instant, though after blinking once
you'd realize it's almost 960/120 = 8 hours.

 

sure, to a lot of people...... on the other hand, are you aware of
the general level of arithmetic ability (I'm not talking math) out in the
general population?


cheers, guenter

 

So you use distilled water - takes out 90+% of the already small
variance.

 

If that's your lesson, its a stupid lesson. Is it so hard to see the
obvious fact that REGARDLESS of what system is selected, you can pick
speed limits and/or distances that are "easy" to get quick answers. 100
kph guarantees an easy answer, but so does 60 mph. THERE IS NO
DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICAL TERMS!!!


Besides, if you can go 590 miles OR 945 km at a constant speed with no
stops, then you must be peeing in your shoes because *my* bladder sure
aint that big.

 

100 kph guarantees an easy answer, but so does 60 mph. THERE IS NO
DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICAL TERMS!!!
[/QUOTE]
Steve, Bingo, that was what the original discussion was about.... "the
easy answer" ... of course there is no practical difference. I guess
the point of the original discussion can get easily lost in the to and fro


best regards, guenter

 

Good point..

 

If you lose your measuring cup, just remember that four Tablespoons is 1/4
cup and, of course, two would be 1/8 cup.

Damn, what a long thread.....

 

Well, he's right about the baking, though. Baking does require more precise
measures than does general cooking. When a recipe calls for a cup of flour,
you scrape the cup with a knife so you have exactly one cup. I like making
bread, too, but you can blow the recipe in a heartbeat if you disregard the
proper measures.

 

It all depends....are you driving a mercedes benz?

 

top posting corrected

Not so, unless you are using one of those stupid bread machines or
something. Hell a cake is far more critical than bread, and I don't
EVER worry about getting the flour flat across the top, mainly because
most of my measuring cups are 2-cups.

When I first started baking from scratch, I tried to adhere to precise
measurements, and had lots of failures. Now I don't worry about it
and everything works fine. I think it is the analness that causes the
problem.

*************************
Dave

 

If you are, factor in 4 hours in Gunter's Garage for every 1 hour on the
road.

 

no kidding, feels like that sometimes with my mercedes'. On and
about 250k km, seems to me from my experience, is when many items need to be
repaired. Moreover, just can't bring myself to always go to the dealer.